While turning a second-floor apartment kitchen back into a
bedroom, the owners of this century-old house decided to relocate
the entrance to the room. When used as a kitchen it made sense to
connect the room directly to the living room. But when used as a
bedroom that close connection isn't so desirable.

Since there was a step down to get into the room, placing
a door in the previous entryway would complicate matters, since a
door should not open over a step. Furthermore the living room could
benefit from a longer uninterrupted wall, which gave the homeowners
more options for placing furniture.

The room after the plaster and lath had
been removed.

The door opening on the right had been covered over
by a previous owner. The other opening, covered with
plastic, had been the entrance to this room.

Since the room was plenty big for a bedroom, (about 12' x 14') we
decided to devote some space to closets. We chose to put a closet
directly behind covered-over doorway, and build an adjacent closet
for the bedroom.

Layout:

The first step in cutting a new doorway is
to lay out the location of the opening. These red
lines indicate the approximate location of the new rough
opening.

However, these marks are NOT the lines where
the studs will be cut.

Since we were installing a 32 inch door, I
laid out the opening to be 34 inches wide. The
height of the opening was 82 inches above the sub-floor.

I had to be careful when laying out the top of the opening. I
couldn't simply measure 82 inches up from the floor because the
floor wasn't level. I measured 82 inches up from the higher side of
the opening, then marked the top line with a level.

The 82 inch height of a rough opening is a standard dimension for
ordinary 6'-8" (or 80 inch) high doors. If a different door
height was being used, I would obtain the height of the rough
opening by simply adding 2 inches to the height of the actual door (not
the height of the door plus the jamb).

This diagram should help explain the proper layout methods
for framing a door opening in a non-load-bearing interior
wall. This diagram shows a bottom plate, which many
older houses lack. Consequently the new studs need to sit
directly on the subfloor.

NOTE: This diagram shows a rough
opening height of 82 inches. Beware that sometimes
an 82 inch tall rough opening might not be enough,
and the only thing worse than excess space above a door jamb
is not enough room to install the door. Lately, I've been
framing rough openings about 83 inches high, unless I
have the pre-hung door in my hands and I know a
shorter opening will work and still leave room to adjust the
vertical position of the door jambs during installation.

MORE NOTES: The side jambs on some
pre-hung doors can be as long as 81-3/4 inches, because
the manufacturers often provide an inch or more of side
jambs that extend below the bottom of the door. I understand
that these jambs are made long so carpet can be installed
after the
doors are installed. The thickness of the finish flooring
must be considered when framing a rough opening for an
interior door. To be on the safe side, I suggest
using an opening height of 83 inches.

Cutting Old Studs:

The old studs needed to be cut at the top
edge of the header, which is 85 inches above the
subfloor (82" rough opening height plus 3" for
the double 2x4 header)

After I marked the new end points of the original
studs, I cut them with a circular saw, which can only
cut about 2½" deep.

To complete the cuts, I used a reciprocating saw with
the blade mounted upside down.

I put a metal-cutting blade in the
reciprocating saw and reached behind the studs to cut
the nails that held the lath to the studs.

This step wasn't entirely necessary, I just felt like
doing it this way.

With the two studs removed, the new
opening began to take shape.

Warning:

When cutting studs in a non-load-bearing partition,
there is normally no need to support the
structure above. If a stud is under any serious load,
the reciprocating saw blade will be pinched as
the cut is completed, and the saw will shake the
operator instead of cutting the wood.

If there is any chance that a partition
supports some load, the weight of the overhead structure
needs to be supported by temporary bracing, and the
loads need to be transferred all the way to the
foundation, which may require additional bracing in
rooms below.

Framing The New Structure:

To make the "header", I attached
two pieces of 2x4 together using 3" deck screws.

Since I didn't have a helper at the time,
I held the header in place with one of the old studs
that was removed earlier.

A closer view of the header.

Since this is a non-load-bearing interior wall,
the header can be made from two 2x4's laying flat.

Got A Load?

A header in a load-bearing wall is usually
made from a pair of 2-by boards standing on edge,
with a plywood spacer to create the required overall
thickness. Of course, the height of the header (i.e. 2x6,
2x8, 2x10 or 2x12) depends on many
factors, such as length of the opening, floor loads
overhead, roof loads, etc. Load-bearing headers are
beyond the scope of this article... there are lots of
books about framing carpentry that discuss this topic.

I installed the trimmer stud on the
left side, but to conserve space I used a 1x4 instead of
a 2x4. You can't do this on a load bearing wall.

I placed the trimmer stud in position on the
right-hand side... it's not fastened yet.

I added a king stud (full length
stud) beside the trimmer stud, and screwed them
together.

To fasten the header boards to the studs,
I drove 3" deck screws through the ends on an
angle. This is just like toe-nailing... I guess it could
be called toe-screwing... but that sounds kinda
weird.

I pre-drilled the holes for these screws to
prevent the wood from splitting too much.

After I made sure the new studs were plumb,
I secured them to the structure by driving 3" deck
screws on an angle into the sub-floor.

Cutting The Opening:

To transfer the corner points to
the other side of the wall, we drilled through at the
corners and at a few points along the sides of the
opening.

But...old plaster often has sand in it, so drilling
through plaster can ruin drill bits. I used a
carbide-tipped masonry drill bit.

On the other side of the wall, we drew
some lines to indicate the approximate location of the
new opening.

Then we secured the wall surface to the new studs
with drywall screws. This must be done before cutting
the opening, or else the plaster will crumble.

This wall consists of drywall over plaster with a
layer of paneling added just to irritate us. We used
2" drywall screws to make sure they would reach
into the framing.

Using the stud edge as a guide, we
carefully cut the plaster with a reciprocating saw and a
long wood-cutting blade.

There are carbide-coated blades for cutting
plaster, but the one I have isn't long enough to cut
from the back side using the stud as a guide. This blade
got dull quickly and I had to throw it away when we were
done.

The other alternative is cutting from the front side,
but it's very difficult to keep the cut close to the
studs. And cutting from the front side would create more
sawdust, and we were trying to minimize dust in this
project.

The last cut we made was the center
section of the top. This prevents the panel from
swinging away like a hinge.

We carefully lowered the cut-off piece down to the
floor, then broke up the plaster and drywall.

After the new opening was cut out, we
covered it with a sheet of plastic.

There are two doorways visible here... the doorway on
the left will become the entrance to a hall closet. This
doorway required some special attention because the old
studs were leaning quite badly.

Faming Another Opening -
A Closet Door:

Years ago somebody had simply chopped off
the studs to frame a new doorway. This wasn't even the
original entrance to the room... there was another
old doorway visible elsewhere.

So we had to work with these cropped-off old studs
(red arrow). We couldn't remove them all because the old
lath is nailed to them.

The lower section of the same stud. We had
to use spacers of varying thickness to get the
king stud perfectly plumb.

In the top picture you can see a 3/4 inch thick
spacer, and in this picture there is 1½" spacer (a
block of 2x4) with another thin piece of plywood. This
is so typical of old house remodeling.

And that isn't the end of the hassles. The old studs were between
3¾" and 3-7/8" thick, and new studs are normally 3½"
thick, so either the old studs had to be planed down, or the
new studs built up with a layer of thin plywood so the
drywall would have a uniform nailing surface.

In this closet, we chose to plane down the old studs because
there wasn't much total area to remove. I think we simply used a
chisel.

For the other side of the door opening, we
attached the trimmer stud to the king stud with a bunch
of 3" deck screws.

The trimmer/king stud combo was installed
adjacent to the studs for the first opening. We also
replaced one of those cropped-off studs over the closet
door, because we installed a short piece of top plate...
because 8-foot long studs were just a bit too short
to reach. The hassles never end!

Note how the old studs protrude beyond the face of
the new studs.

After the closet door opening was framed,
we built a short partition from 2x4's and tilted it into
place.

The width of the wall between the two doorways
is important, because if that narrow section of wall is
too skinny, it will be difficult to install the trim
around the doors.

As we were framing this, we knew that the door
casings were going to be either 3½" or 4"
wide, a bit wider than the standard 2¼" casing.

Old House Remedy -
Making New Studs Thicker:

When all the framing was done, we went
back and added a spacer of 3/8" plywood (arrows) on
the face of the new studs.

We used 1½" 18 gauge staples to
fasten the filler strips, because it's fast. Of course,
the filler strips can also be nailed by hand with small
framing nails.

Completion:

This is a photo of the same doorway when
the remodeling project was almost done.

Don't ask about the color... I didn't choose it.

The door after completion of the project.

The casing on the left side of the door had to be
ripped narrower, yet it doesn't stand out. If we hadn't
left enough distance between the doorway and the
partition, this casing could have looked really dumb.

We had just over 2 inches of wall between the corner and the door
rough opening. After the door was installed, the jamb gave us
slightly more than a half inch of additional surface to cover with
the casing, so the 3½" fluted casing only needed to be ripped
to about 2¾ inches.